How to Sell Your Home in 7 Easy Steps - Step 6, Marketing

In steps 1 through 4 of How to Sell Your Home in 7 Easy Steps, our discussion focused on the financial aspect of selling your home. In steps 5 and 6 we are talking more about the PRODUCT - your house.

understand current market conditions

assess the current value of your home

set the right price

calculate the bottom line

prepare the home for sale

create an advertising and marketing strategy

review contracts and common sales practices for your marketplace

Once your product is spiffed up and ready to go live, it's time to shout it from the rooftops. To increase your chances of selling, you need to have as many people as possible know your home is for sale.

According to the National Association of Realtors, research on the 2011 profile of home buyers indicates that 35% of the buyers started their search on line, 88% used the internet in their home search and 89% of buyers purchased their home through a real estate agent.

Wow!!! What this tells you is that the pictures of your home are one of your most important marketing tools. Everyone is visual when it comes to buying a home. Buyers want to see pictures before they will even drive by. Agents (89% of buyers buy through an agent) want to see pictures. Buying a home is with the heart but in order to get a buyer to "heart" your house you need to get them inside. Descriptions of your property should lean towards painting a picture in the buyer's heart; but the pictures should show the backyard, the garage, the kitchen cabinets and etcetera etcetera etcetera. Your home should have a minimum of 15 pictures.

One of the throwbacks to the old method of advertising that still works is the yard sign. The buyers who are not really actively looking for a home and happen to drive by may be spurred on to proactive looking by seeing your yard sign.

Another method that still works but not quite as effectively is the public and agent open houses. With internet advertising, the best use of time for real estate agents may not be holding an open house. In the "old days" the agent open house was a crucial part of marketing but not so much any more with the advent of the internet.

Direct marketing to agents who are active in your community is of value.

But the most important aspect of marketing today is the internet. It is available 24/7 and it is global. For example through the Keller Williams Listing System your property is fed to more than 350 online search engines and available on KW's Web network of more than 76000 sites.

Marketing your home is impacted sharply by supply and demand and value/affordability. In a report released by the Bipartisan Policy Center in March of 2012, the baby boomers and the echo boom generation will significantly impact trends in the housing market for the next 20 years. These demographics present challenges to marketing your home: seniors demand housing but also contribute to the housing supply and echo boomers (born roughly between 1981 and 1995) are numerous and generally well educated but have been hit hard by the recession.

Barbara: The internet is such a huge part of our current marketing strategies. I wonder how happy would would still be with those big paper books that were delivered weekly to the broker. Now, that was work!!!!

Oh gosh - everytime I think of them I shake in my boots. I actually go back even further than the books when we just had a stapled together book with no pictures that was definitely not current by the time we got it. The internet sure has changed the way we do business.

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